“What Beethoven wanted from pianos, as he wanted from everything, was more: more robust build, more fullness of sound, a bigger range of volume, a wider range of notes. As soon as new notes were added ...

In 1819, Anton Diabelli, a Viennese music publisher, composed a little waltz and sent it to dozens of composers—he wanted each of them to write and send him a single variation, which he’d publish ...

Music lovers who are familiar with Jan Swafford’s earlier biographies of Brahms and Charles Ives will need no further incitement to read this mammoth but compelling biography of a composer arguably ...

Given the anvil-like solidity of this new Beethoven biography from Slate regular Jan Swafford, it’s clear that an attempt is being made to cleave a sizable space among the various works centered on ...

Can you remember when you first heard a piece of music by Beethoven? That last question I can certainly answer. I was 17, on a school trip to Vienna, and on the final night our teacher had secured ...

Following Jan Swafford through the thousand-plus pages of his new biography of Ludwig van Beethoven is hardly as exhilarating as listening to the music of the peerless composer. But the stately rhythm ...

Ludwig van Beethoven’s career was and still is boxed into early, middle, and late periods; the last three of his violin-and-piano sonatas, taken together, fairly race through those checkpoints. The ...

Beethoven’s 1817 fortepiano, built by Thomas Broadwood. Beethoven, though primarily thought of as a great composer, was also the greatest pianist of his age. Only Franz Liszt could approach ...

At the beginning of 2020, I resolved to ignore, as far as possible, celebrations of the two-hundred-and-fiftieth anniversary of Ludwig van Beethoven’s birth, which fell last month. The uncontested ...